A Day in the Life of Dean Winchester
by Mythopoeia
Summary: An ordinary day in Dean Winchester's extraordinary life, during the course of which he eats pancakes, desecrates a grave or two, and most decidedly does NOT think about Sammy. Pre-S1, Stanford years.
1. Chapter 1

_AN: Good golly am I starting another chapter story? Uh, yeah, I suppose. This was supposed to be a short story but it kept getting longer, so I'm breaking it up into parts. I want you to know upfront that the whole conceit of this story is that it's an ordinary day for Dean, so it's pretty routine, little to no actual peril. I mean, in order to get the reputation of being a good hunter Dean can't be getting into a life-or-death sort of situation EVERY job. Every episode of the show the brothers miss clues, or misinterpret clues, or get snuck up on by bad guys, or otherwise err into a perilous situation, but that cannot be the norm otherwise they'd have QUITE a different reputation in the hunter community. So I present for your perusal a typical day on the job wherein everything goes right for Dean. Or, well. As right as it can go while Sam's away at Stanford._

_I own nothing Supernatural except a button on my backpack and my memories of seeing the cast at SDCC last year._

* * *

When he wakes up Dad's bed is already empty, and the shower's sputtering away in the bathroom with water that Dean knows from sad experience is lukewarm at best. He pushes himself out of bed, yawning and scrubbing one hand through his sleep-mussed hair as he staggers to the bathroom door and knocks loudly.

"I'm getting us food," he announces over the sound of running water, "be back in ten."

John Winchester hollers something acquiescent that is muffled by the bathroom door, but Dean wasn't really asking for permission anyway; it's their routine that first up gets the first shower and second awake goes on a breakfast run. He troops back to his bed and squats down to rummage beneath it, emerging triumphantly with the pair of battered sneakers he had left there the night before. He eases his feet into them carefully, stooping to knot the laces. He's had these running shoes close to three years now, but they still don't look much worse than they did when he picked them off the shelf at the discount store. He grew up being careful with his things so that they wouldn't be in bad shape when he passed them down to Sammy, and he guesses that there are some habits that you just can't break. Anyway, he likes these shoes so the longer he can wear them the better.

He jogs more than runs to the diner down the street, places his order, uses their restroom while the order's filled, and then walks back to the motel feeling much more awake, balancing the bag of food and the styrofoam cups in his arms. To his surprise, his father opens the door for him before he can manage to fumble his room key out of his pocket. John Winchester isn't a man of many weaknesses but he does tend to take a ridiculously long time in the shower, and Dean hadn't expected him to be out of the bathroom yet. He's fully dressed, even, though his hair's still wet and sticking up in a tangled thatch. Dean had resigned himself to an ice cold shower this morning, but he begins to dare to hope that there might be five minutes' worth of warm water still left in the pipes.

He keeps one black coffee for himself and passes the other to his father, who accepts it with a nod of thanks. When they settle down together at the perpetually greasy table to eat, Dad empties three packets of black pepper over his scrambled eggs before he starts talking business.

"You set to torch those bones tonight?"

"Yessir," Dean mumbles thickly around his mouthful of pancakes, setting down his fork. He manages to swallow before elaborating to get his father up to speed on the case.

"Based on the timeline and the girls' descriptions of the ghost I've singled out the culprit. His name's Andrew Cooper, born in 1911, and he died in his early twenties after getting hit with a bad case of pneumonia; his family still lives in town so I paid his grandnephew a visit last night. According to this guy Cooper was engaged to some girl when he died—blonde, blue-eyed, about five feet tall."

"Just like all the girls who've been attacked," John says, sounding interested for the first time, and Dean nods.

"Right. Also, apparently Cooper's nickname for her in the letters he wrote home from college was Helen, which is the name those girls reported the ghost saying when it appeared to them in the park. She's definitely got something to do with his rampage now. I'd guess something's happened to trigger his spirit to start searching for his girl."

Dean breaks off to take a sip from his styrofoam coffee cup. When he sets the cup down, he adds:

"Her actual name was Doris Bragg, so I didn't see the connection until I talked to Cooper's grandnephew and he showed me those letters. Cooper was something of a classicist; when he got sick he was away at college studying Greek literature. Calling his girlfriend after Helen of Troy was his vintage geek version of sweet-talk."

Sammy would have rolled his eyes at that, but John just nods, considering. "He buried in town?"

"In the graveyard right next to the park, yeah. I'm heading there first thing, and once I find and mark his headstone I figure I'll go pay Doris' family a visit too; there's a Bragg in the phone book at the front desk. They might be able to shed light on what changed to rile Cooper up."

"Sounds good," Dad says approvingly, and just like that the day's plans are finalized. Dean dumps his empty containers in the trash and then takes the world's fastest shower (because the water _is_ ice-cold after all), and by the time he emerges from the bathroom freshly shaved and dressed and with his sneakers swapped out for his work boots, John has already reclaimed the table for his research. His journal's laid out open, and there are stacks of papers everywhere. He barely looks up to see Dean rummage through his duffel and pull out a pistol which he tucks into his jacket pocket.

"Got your phone?"

Dean waves his cell around in the air before realizing that it's pointless considering Dad's not looking. He shoves it back into the back pocket of his jeans.

"Sure. Yours have its ringer on?"

Dad grunts, which Dean figures means yes.

"Keep me posted," John Winchester says, turning over a page in his journal and frowning.

"Will do."

Satisfied that all his equipment's in order, Dean zips the duffel bag shut and tightens the drawstring before slinging it over his shoulder. He checks for his keys and wallet, and then heads to the door, undoing the chain and pulling it open. The day's early yet but there's a brimming-over liquid quality to the light outside that warns it's gonna be a scorcher. Belatedly he considers he should have packed an extra water bottle, especially since he'll probably be doing some digging in Cooper's grave today, but whatever. If he really needs to he'll stop by the gas station for a fill up later. Or who knows, maybe he'll hit lucky and the Bragg in the phone book will turn out to be one of those nice old lady types who like plying visitors with southern iced tea and lemonade and, uh, cucumber sandwiches and things.

Squaring his shoulders, he steps outside and lets the door fall shut behind him, waiting to hear the click of the lock re-engaging before setting out for the stairs to the parking lot. He doesn't bother to say goodbye to his father. There's no point, as he'll be seeing him again in just a few hours, and anyway. Dean hates saying goodbye to anybody.


	2. Chapter 2

_AN: Finally, part 2! In which Dean continues about his daily business of grave desecration and lying to people. Next installment will be up within a week!_

It takes twenty minutes to drive to the town's ancient cemetery, and another fifteen to find anywhere to park the car. Dean is, of course, used to small backwater roads—hell, at this point he's actually more comfortable in small towns than in big cities, probably, though he's pretty sure that just means he's rugged, not that he's a hick—but Nowhereville, Tennessee, is pretty much all one-way roads barely wide enough for bicycle traffic, let alone a handsome car like the Impala. He makes more than a few U-Turns in strangers' driveways, swearing under his breath the whole time, and sometimes the lacy curtains in the sitting room windows twitch as their invisible occupants regard him suspiciously, and sometimes they don't. When he finally finds a cul-de-sac with space enough for him to park, he has to backtrack on foot for over ten minutes before finally reaching the graveyard entrance. Long before he reaches it, he is already regretting that extra water bottle.

Before he enters the cemetery proper, Dean takes a few minutes to explore the tiny park which takes up approximately fifty square feet next to the graveyard and which consists entirely of scratchy thickets of grass, a scattering of ancient, knotty trees, and clouds of mosquitoes. A waist-high brick wall surrounds the park, and there are the remnants of iron-wrought gates at both the north and south sides of the wall, though they stand agape and incomplete, rust-eaten and drowned in foliage. Dean guesses they're at least a hundred years old. There is an uneven concrete path that cuts through the park from its northern gate to its southern, and he walks it carefully, stopping now and again to take out his EMF detector and scan the area for supernatural activity. He lingers over a makeshift memorial set out at the edge of a bend in the path that consists of some wilted hand-written signs, a tall votive candle with St. Therese of Liseaux's rose-wreathed face painted on its glass sides, a vase of yellow daisies, and an already bedraggled-looking teddy bear. At the center of this motley cluster of items sits a framed photograph of a pretty blonde teenaged girl. Dean guesses it's a school photo judging by the abstract watercolor backdrop and the unflattering uniform sweater she is wearing.

This last victim was only seventeen, captain of her tiny school's tiny swim team and older sister to three tow-headed brothers. Dean had already gone to visit with Katie Andersen's family the day before, which is how he knows now that she had last been seen alive when she left home last week after school to go jogging along her usual route, which happened to include the path which wound through the park. It was while on that path, according to the local paper, that she was attacked. The official cause of death was blunt-force trauma from a fall, with indications that she had struggled with someone who then dashed her to the ground with immense force. Poor Katie had hit her head and died instantly. When Dean had last checked the paper, local police remained mystified, and the public was being urged to contact authorities with any information they might have on the case.

Dean fiddles with a knob on his EMF detector and waves it briefly over the makeshift shrine, but there is no warning whine and he pockets it again with relief as he makes his way further down the path. Katie, at least, is resting in peace.

Putting the ghost of a dude to rest is one thing; guys'll mostly just try to murder you. Dead chicks have a weird tendency to try to hit on you and _then_ murder you and Dean really isn't in the mood for that sort of thing right now.

* * *

He finds the grave pretty easily, which surprises him considering that the older a stone is the more difficult it is to identify, generally. But Cooper's headstone isn't drowned in moss or crumbling to pieces like Dean had been anticipating. Aside from some weathering and water-stains on the granite, it's obviously been well-maintained ever since the guy died, and there are even some flowers in a china pitcher in front of the stone. Not particularly fresh flowers, but they haven't quite lost their color so they were put there a couple weeks ago, maybe. Dean frowns, looking down at them with his hands in his jacket pockets. Cooper's grandnephew hadn't seemed the type to leave flowers at his obscure relative's grave.

Dean takes a second to feel appropriately respectful of the fact that someone still alive cares enough about this long-dead kid to leave flowers at his graveside, and then he takes a thick black sharpie out of his pocket and marks the headstone with a giant "X" right over the block letters that spell out Cooper's name. The letters are in better shape than he had expected, true, but they're worn down enough that he doesn't trust they'll be easily legible in the dark. Better to be safe than sorry, right?

If whoever-it-is is shows up today to replace the flowers there might be trouble, but Dean's lived this long trusting to his luck, and he's willing to let it carry him through the rest of today, too. He stows the sharpie back in the pocket that doesn't hide his pistol and heads for the south gate. He's tempted to retreat back to the Impala and its glorious air conditioning, but mindful of how impossible it will be to find another parking spot he turns left at the gate instead, pulling out from the sharpie-pocket a folded scrap of notepaper he had scribbled on back at the motel. He squints at it as he fishes for his phone, takes it out and flips it open.

Trudging up the street, the sun beating hot on the back of his neck, he punches the numbers from the paper into his key pad and then raises his cell to his ear. It only rings a couple times.

"Hi, Linda Bragg? This is Dean Oakland, I left you a message last night?—Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am, I'm the one from the school paper. I'm sorry, I know it's still a little early, but I was wondering—You're sure? I don't want to put you out at all.—No, no, actually, I was already planning on driving over to interview some other folks today, so if you don't have anything else planned—ha, yes, I'm actually on the road right now. Traffic is looking better than I expected, too, so I'll be in town pretty soon. I've got some other meetings already scheduled so if it's all right with you, I was wondering if you'd be willing to meet with me in half-an-hour or so . . ."


	3. Chapter 3

_AN: In which Dean conducts an interview and learns a few things._

It turns out Linda Bragg is a short, square woman who wears horn-rimmed spectacles on a chain around her neck, old-lady jewelry on her wrists but no rings on her callused fingers, and her hair up in a flyaway bun on the top of her head. Dean would guess that she's in her mid-sixties or thereabouts, as her red hair is so faded with white it looks pink, and though her face is not heavily lined, the sunspotting and weathering across her nose and the backs of her hands is very thick. Her forehead is like leather. She greets Dean at the door with a strong handshake and when he explains he's the student who called her for an interview earlier, she is all too happy to let him come inside for a chat.

"Hot day," she remarks, as she ushers him inside. Dean tries to casually wipe the sweat off his face with his leather sleeve. It doesn't really go well.

"Yes'm," he explains, playing his condition off with a self-deprecating smile. "My car's air conditioning is bust, so it was a hot drive from Nashville, let me tell you."

"I'll see if I can't get you something to cool you down," she says, and he inwardly cheers. She closes the door behind him, but doesn't lock it.

"Dean, you said your name is?"

"Yes, ma'am," he replies respectfully, carefully wiping his feet on the scratchy brown doormat and bobbing his head in a polite sort of way. She leads him into her cluttered, cozy kitchen, sits him down at her kitchen table, and then heads to her small fridge, pulling open the door and rummaging around inside. There's some crayon drawings pinned on the fridge door with magnets shaped like horse heads, some _Dear Abby_ clippings, a grocery list. A dog's water bowl is in the corner of the kitchen, but there's no dog. A cheap plastic electric fan perches bravely on the counter next to the sink, fretfully sucking hot air into its whirling blades and spitting it out again, but the room is still sweltering. Dean leans slightly towards the open fridge, basking in the blissfully cold air washing out of it and then hastily pulling back into his seat as Linda shuts the door and straightens up, two cans in her hands.

"Here," she says, handing him one. He's excited for a split second until he realizes it's ginger ale. He hates ginger ale.

"Thanks, Ms. Bragg," he says, popping open the top and taking a polite swig. He keeps his expression appreciative, goes to set the can on the table top, realizes there isn't any space what with all the unopened mail, bags of recyclables, and collectable Elvis Presley figurines cluttering the surface, and so just ends up awkwardly holding the can in his lap instead. He resists the strong impulse to press its icy sides to his sweaty forehead.

"Don't mention it, son," she says, settling into her own chair and popping the tab of her own can with her stubby thumb-nail. She looks at him over the piles of paper and drums her fingers on the edge of the table.

"So, do I just talk and you write it down, or how does this go? Got a tape recorder on you?"

"Uh," says Dean, and then he hastily fishes a pencil and small notepad out of his back jeans pocket.

"I'll just take notes as you talk and when I get back to campus I'll draft the article. You'll get to read it, of course, before I submit it to the paper."

"Sounds good. So, you said you want to hear about my Ma?"

"It's for a series discussing the previous generation, ma'am, a sort of character piece discussing the history of the town through the eyes of folks who saw it grow. I'm looking to write a separate story focusing on a different person for each decade starting in the 1880s, all the way up to the present."

"And you said you wanted to hear about my Ma and her relationship with Andrew."

"Readers love that doomed romance stuff," Dean says, and he knows it's dumb and tactless before it's even left his mouth, but he's never been good at making stuff up on the fly. Lying's not a big deal, but his lies tend to be a bit too honest to what he's thinking. It's why Sammy used to take point on the lying and Dean would mostly just serve as charm to back him up.

Luckily, Linda Bragg doesn't seem to take offense. She just nods knowingly, and takes a massive swallow of her soda.

"The _Titanic_ effect, I gotcha. Well what I know of my Ma's old beau isn't as exciting as all that, but it's a cute sort of story anyways. They went to school together when they were real small, and according to her he was sweet on her ever since they were kids. Isn't that nice? When he officially started courting her he was only fourteen, and she was twelve. I remember she said he took her to the store, they split a nickel's worth of candy . . ."

Dean listens attentively and pretends to take notes at the parts he imagines a college newspaper writer would actually be taking notes, but most of what Linda has to tell him isn't what he's really interested in. Or at least it isn't until she pauses to take a swallow of her soda, her eyes slightly misty.

"Ma never stopped loving him, really, even if she loved my father too. He was her first sweetheart, and I guess that sort of thing has power over some people, though I can't say I've felt it myself. Towards the end, when she was . . . When she was real sick, you know, she would think she was talking to him, sometimes. _Andrew_, she'd say. Sometimes _Andy_. She'd have entire conversations with the air." Linda smiles bravely, even if her eyes, behind the lenses, are rather sad. "We only took her in to test for dementia after she started setting an extra place at the table, insisting it was for a guest when there was no one else in the house. The decline was fast, after that. It was hard, but I was grateful for it too, in a way. When she would talk to Andrew I got to see my mother as a young girl, before she died. And she was happy. It was special."

"Um," is all Dean can think up as an answer to that, scratching behind his ear with his pencil. But then he freezes.

"I want to thank you for sharing all this with me," he says, very carefully. "I know it must be hard talking about her so soon after her death. It was pretty recent, right?"

"Yesterday marked four months exactly," Linda replies. "The photo we displayed at the funeral home used to be Andrew's, actually. She's about nineteen in it, if you want me to fetch it for you."

"That'd be great," Dean enthuses, and he even makes up a pretty good yarn about how he might be able to use the photo in his story if she'd be willing to loan it to him. _There's a scanner back at the school newspaper office. He could make a copy._

She fetches him the photo. It's an old sepia print about as big as his hand, slightly water-damaged in the bottom corner but honestly in pretty great condition compared to other old photographs he's seen on the job. There isn't anything remotely creepy about it, which is a relief. Just a pretty, petite girl with pale hair standing in front of a backdrop with a slightly fixed smile on her face.

"You're sure this was Cooper's?"

"Oh, yes," Linda says, leaning over his shoulder to peer at it as he holds it in his hand. "When Andrew died his college shipped his things back to his parents, and they returned the photo to my mother, along with a locket containing a clipping of my mother's hair. He had died wearing it, isn't that sad? The photo and the locket were all Ma had of him after he died so she treasured them."

"You still have that locket?" Dean asks in his most friendly casual voice. Linda nods.

"It's still in my Ma's jewelry box upstairs. My brother wanted to bury her with it, but it's such a nice heirloom piece, I put my foot down."

"Good for you," Dean says, scribbling a last couple words in his notepad and then shoving both pencil and pad back in his pocket. He stands up, only barely remembering to grab the soda can before it spills off his lap.

He thanks Linda Bragg for her time, and scribbles the number for one of his burner phones onto the back of one of the sheets of paper littering the tabletop, promising to get back in touch in a few days to show her the finished article and to return the photo. She walks him to the door, and when he explains he had to park around the corner she insists on fetching him another soda to drink on his walk. It's another ginger ale, but he stows it in his jacket pocket on instinct and doesn't even think to dump it in someone's garden until he's back at the Impala and it's too late, all the gardens left behind.


	4. Chapter 4

_AN: In which Dean finally eats pie and the mystery finally starts coming together. (Also, hey, I'm back! Life got preeeetty rough so sorry about the long absence, but this fic is basically done now so updates should come fast.)_

The phone rings five times before John Winchester finally picks up, which startles Dean since by this point he was anticipating having to leave a voice mail. His dad sounds no more tired than usual, nor grumpier, but his mind is clearly focused elsewhere and Dean fills him in on the details of his investigation thus far as quickly as he can.

". . . The locket," he is soon explaining, relishing the feeling of the moving air powering through the Impala's open window as he tears down a main road, "has a fragment of her mother's hair in it. So what I'm thinking—"

"Is that who's to say it's Doris' hair after all?"

"Exactly." Dean scratches at his jaw, sniffs. "Could be Cooper's. And even if it isn't I'm willing to bet the ghost's got some kind of link to it, if he really was haunting Doris. It was technically an object of sentimental value to him when he was alive, even if it isn't his own DNA material. Worth setting fire to, anyway. I'll take it tonight before I head to the graveyard. I want to use it to lure him close first."

"Don't get caught," John warns him. Dean can very faintly hear the sound of some pages turning. "I ain't got the time for busting you out of jail. Pick the lock, wipe your prints, and keep the whole business clean, you hear?"

"Yes sir."

Dean reaches to turn up the AC without taking his eyes off the road, its familiar rattling sound almost as soothing as the resultant blast of cold air hitting his hot skin. He coughs once, and shifts the phone against his ear.

"Hey, you want to meet up for lunch now? I'm near the diner, could order something out if you want, or you could meet me here, I dunno. Or are you busy?"

"Busy," John grunts.

"Okay then," says Dean. He turns into the diner's four-space parking lot and the gravel crunches in a satisfying sort of way as he eases the Impala into a miraculously empty spot. He cuts the engine, feels the humming of the car fade out of his bones.

"By the way," he adds, staring down at his hand where it still rests on the wheel. "She gave me an extra can of ginger ale when I left and I've still got it. If you want it. S'not open."

"What the hell did you hold onto it for," his dad's voice grumbles in his ear, and for just that split second Dean can't take it any more.

"Habit," he bites out into the phone. There's a silence on the other end. Dean knows his dad must know what he means, must know who Dean spent all the years of his life building a habit of saving things for, but he's hot and he's tired and he's still got a nice old lady's house to break into and a ghost to catch all alone so whatever. Living dangerously, that's Dean Winchester's way.

"Dump it," John Winchester rasps into his ear at last, and then the line goes dead.

Dean snaps the phone shut, slams it down on the empty seat beside him, and sucks in a deep breath, closing his eyes just a moment. Then he exits the car and walks up to the diner, his hands in his pockets.

He tosses the soda into the wastebasket outside the door on his way in.

Dean mulls over his notes while he chews at a particularly drippy hamburger, doing his best to keep the grease from getting on both hands but managing to stain the papers pretty good anyway. It's not just the notes he took while at Linda's house, either; it's all the stuff he managed to collect during his snooping earlier that week: a couple articles about the dead jogger, an obituary for Doris Bragg, some interviews he managed to get with the girls who were frightened by the ghost before Katie died. He checks the date of death on the obituary and the dates on the ghost-sightings, and then waves his waitress back to his table to order a celebratory slice of pie.

The first report of a ghost-sighting happened the day after Doris was cremated.

Brow furrowed low, he flips to a blank page in his notebook and starts scribbling out a rough outline of the facts, laying out the story.

Andrew Cooper: born in 1911, grew up in a dull speck of a town in Tennessee, fell violently in love with a girl in 1925, spent a couple years filling his brain with epic poetry, and died a penniless virgin in 1934 because that's just how life treats some people. Doris Bragg: born in 1913, seemingly never entirely got over the loss of her first beau, kept that locket and that photograph all her life, talked to dead people and set them places at table, died in 2003. The day after Doris' body was cremated, Andrew's ghost started seeking out girls that looked like her, and in a moment of agitation he killed Katie Andersen either after realizing she was the wrong girl or in reflexive anger when she tried to get away from him instead of welcoming him like Doris probably had been doing all those decades. Dean spares a moment as he writes to wonder how soon after Cooper's death his spirit started appearing to Doris, and to try to puzzle out why the girl seemingly accepted the haunting so calmly. He's heard of spirits appearing only to those whom they were especially close with in life, of course; it's not exactly uncommon. But generally that kind of haunting doesn't last long, and for a woman to not only tolerate her dead boyfriend's ghost stalking her everywhere but also manage to hide his presence from her family until her mind deteriorated enough that she forgot he was a ghost at all? Yeah, Dean's going to go out on a limb here and say this is a first. Some people, he thinks, are crazy even before they're crazy. Even the ghost in this instance is nuts, although Dean doesn't think Andrew is a malicious spirit, nor even deliberately violent—yet. But he is clearly heading down that road now that the woman he'd been haunting all this time is gone. He probably doesn't even understand she's dead. Ghosts, in Dean's experience, can be pretty dense about that sort of thing.

Only once he thinks: _Cooper the friendly ghost_, and he actually cracks a smile because hey, that's pretty funny, but when he realizes he's sitting alone in a sticky diner booth grinning into thin air like a maniac he busies himself with his pie again. Dad doesn't appreciate dumb jokes like that, which is one of the lousier things about accompanying his old man on stakeouts and things. Dean's always been a talker to fill silence, just saying dumb stuff to make folks laugh, but Dad's all about the quiet.

The pie is pretty good—the crust is more oily than buttery, but the apples have just the right amount of cinnamon and the portion size is more generous than the last place Dean went to, in Kentucky. He eats it fast, and then when he's paying for the meal he orders another slice to carry out in a styrofoam container because why the hell not.

It'll give him something to look forward to after Cooper's smoked, anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

Breaking into Linda's house, as it turns out, is easy. It's not like Dean is scared of breaking into an old lady's home, or anything, but as he creeps up to her house in the dark he does keep thinking on that dog dish that had been in her kitchen. Sure, it had been empty, but that might just mean her mutt is going to be extra excited to take a bite out of Dean when he drops over her side fence into her yard. But his luck holds, and even after he spends longer than he should pressed against the side of her house, listening through the fence for any canine noises, there's no sign of any dog. Maybe it's dead, or at the vet's. As long as it isn't close enough to chew at him, Dean doesn't care.

Most hunters are at least moderately athletic—you get strong or you get dead, in this line of work—but Dean's younger than average and he's grown up in this business, so he's definitely ahead of the curve when it comes to fence-jumping. He springs up, catches the top of the wooden stakes, and swings over the eight-foot-high fence easily, practically vaulting the top. He lands almost soundlessly, in a low crouch that absorbs most of the impact, and stays there a moment, listening. Nope, still no dog.

Padding through the dark yard feels familiar, even though he has of course never walked here before. He's been housebreaking since he was a kid. Every yard is the same in the dark, reduced to shapes to walk around and shapes to avoid tripping over—most of them the same shapes, too. Garden hose. Cheap plastic chairs. Trash bins. Fruit trees. He makes his way easily to the kitchen door, the one that opens into the yard and that he had taken note of during his earlier visit, and he tries the handle. It's locked. Sam was always a quicker study with lockpicks, so their system was always Dean jumps the fence, Sam takes care of the locks, but it's not like Dean is a hopeless case, no matter what Sammy used to tease. Besides, he's gotten his practice in these last few months. He gets the door open in just under a minute, silently letting himself inside.

_ Upstairs in my Ma's jewelry box_, he remembers. He ghosts his way through the kitchen and front room, and when he finds the narrow staircase he eases his way up slowly, careful to set his feet on the side of the steps closest to the wall, where they won't creak as much. He staked out the house for hours, earlier, thinking he would have to wait until Linda fell asleep before he could burgle her house, but at around eight-thirty she had walked out the front door with her purse slung over her shoulder and a jean jacket on, and she had driven away in a battered old pick-up. He had waited ten minutes to make sure she was really gone, and then had leapt into action. He had no idea where she had gone, and he didn't know when she would be back, but she sure isn't here now, and that good fortune is good enough for Dean Winchester. Just because he can knock out an old lady in a fair fight doesn't mean he _wants_ to. Besides, Linda had seemed like a sturdy sort of old lady. Better safe than sorry.

_Better safe than sorry_ is why he is trying so hard to be quiet regardless. He confirmed earlier that Linda lives alone, but there's no sense in tromping around alerting anyone to his presence, whether a neighbor walking by or a houseguest he isn't aware of in one of the dark rooms. The first doorway he peeks into is a small, square bathroom, but the second looks like it could be Linda's bedroom: it looks too lived in to be a guestroom. Even in the dark he can easily make out the overflowing laundry hamper at the foot of the untidily made bed, the decorative lamp on the bedside table perched beside a stack of books and a drinking glass. Dean's night vision is very good—he doesn't know if that's just a natural talent he has or if his years spent hunting has trained him to it, but it does come in handy—and he doesn't have to look very hard to find what must be the jewelry box. It is standing on the dressertop, half-hidden by a stack of papers and envelopes. He opens the tiny wooden drawers and pokes his fingers through the trinkets inside, searching. The locket is pretty simple, when he does find it—not heavy enough to be a precious metal, and roughly the size of Dean's thumbnail. He takes it, chain and all, and slips it into a plastic sandwich bag that he then stuffs into his jeans pocket. He closes up the jewelry box, closes up the room, closes up the house, and sneaks back out into the garden. Vaulting the fence is even easier the second time, as he's buoyed up by the high of a job well done. He lets that sense of satisfaction float him all the way down the block, around a corner, and down another two streets to where he parked the Impala. Once he's comfortably back in the driver's seat he turns the key in the ignition and pulls away from the curb, driving towards the north side of town. It's weird driving without any music rattling in his teeth, but he's turned the music off for the night, and even keeps to the posted speed limit. Dean might know how to have a little fun on the job—okay, a _lot_ of fun—but he also knows when it's time to shut up, focus, and get to work. Can't afford to be conspicuous right as the real work begins, and can't afford to be cocky yet, either. Plenty of time for that later. But right now?

It's time to meet a ghost.


End file.
